No, it’s not named after comic actor Chevy Chase (born Cornelius Crane Chase). Chevy Chase was a large Glendale housing tract opened by Bert C. Farrar (1873-1960) in 1925. Born in Michigan, Farrar made his name in real estate in Seattle before moving to L.A. in 1922; the 1,600 acre Chevy Chase was his first Southland subdivision. (He later built Farrar Manor in Westchester.) The name itself comes from both the chase (hunting grounds) around the Cheviot Hills between Scotland and England and the medieval battle term chevauchée, meaning “horse charge”. It was popularized in The Ballad of Chevy Chase, a song about a 14th century skirmish between the English and the Scots which indeed involved a chevauchée in the Cheviot chase. It all sounds very obscure, but the ballad was famous for centuries and lent its name to Washington, D.C.’s own Chevy Chase region. Bert Farrar’s first ads for Chevy Chase included the Clan Douglas slogan Jamais Arriere: “Never Behind”. Since the Earl of Douglas had led the Scots at Cheviot, it seems that Farrar (or his ad agency) knew his medieval history and wasn’t just copying the D.C. suburb.
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